The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, a radiographic image system, and an image processing method and program for applying trimming processing to a radiographic image acquired by an imaging apparatus for acquiring a radiographic image of a subject.
Radiographic images acquired by irradiating a subject, which may be, for example, a patient, with X ray or other radiation are widely used by doctors as diagnostic images. Presently, the wide use of CR (computer-aided radiography) type or DR (digital radiography) type radiographic imaging apparatus has led to practical applications of radiographic image systems for medical use for digitally processing, for example, acquisition, image processing, and display of radiographic images.
A radiographic image system is equipped with, for example, an imaging apparatus for acquiring a radiographic image of a subject and outputting the digital image data thereof, an image processing apparatus for applying image processing to the acquired radiographic image, and an image diagnosis apparatus for displaying the image-processed radiographic image. These imaging apparatus, image processing apparatus, and image diagnosis apparatus, for example, are installed, for example, in different places in a hospital and connected to each other via network.
The image data of the radiographic image of the subject acquired by the imaging apparatus is outputted from the imaging apparatus and inputted via network to the image processing apparatus for image processing. Subsequently, in a diagnosis given by a doctor, the image data after image processing is outputted from the image processing apparatus, inputted via network to the image diagnosis apparatus, and displayed on the image diagnosis apparatus. The doctor gives diagnosis by referring to the diagnostic image displayed on the image diagnosis apparatus.
When the subject is imaged aslant, there arises a need of the image processing apparatus performing, for example, image rotation processing or trimming frame rotation processing (or trimming processing wherein a region is freely designated) in order to clip only an appropriate diagnostic region.
JP 2009-201872 A describes a chest image rotation apparatus comprising a chest image entering means for entering a chest image, a centrum region extraction means for extracting a centrum region from the entered chest image, a centrum direction calculation means for calculating the centrum direction in the chest image based on the extracted centrum region, a chest image rotation means for rotating the chest image so that the calculated centrum direction is perpendicular to the horizontal sides of the chest image, and an output means for outputting the rotated chest image.
JP 2002-368975 A describes an image processing apparatus that performs image data conversion so that the image rotates in an image trimming processing in an image processing apparatus for processing image data containing an image of at least a part of a human body.